Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
People still watch sports.
lot of sports channels are also moving to streaming services. Like I can get all the sportsnets channels on my ipad now, nfl/mlb/nhl with their own streaming services. ESPN is now available on slingbox, etc.
But give it another 5 years at most and you'll be able to just signup to any sport you want, or sports network streaming service on it's own sans any cable subscription.
As long as we are bringing up ideals, is it alright if I mention my interest in our MLAs and MPs being elected by a STV for proportional representation ridings? I think more than a few problems would be solved with our MLAs and MPs better representing us than FPTP bullshit that currently saddled us with the Con majority of seats in parliament.
Yeah, this would be excellent.
And although the US is indeed seriously screwed, the good parts of the system are that it's not as heavily whipped as ours and you get to vote for a rep you like without that vote immediately meaning you're endorsing the leader of that party as the executive. I'd be happy with any reform that lets MPs have more independence and reduces the stupid voting games Canadians keep playing because what they really want is a minority government.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
People still watch sports.
lot of sports channels are also moving to streaming services. Like I can get all the sportsnets channels on my ipad now, nfl/mlb/nhl with their own streaming services. ESPN is now available on slingbox, etc.
But give it another 5 years at most and you'll be able to just signup to any sport you want, or sports network streaming service on it's own sans any cable subscription.
Kinda. Alot of them have walked it back later too. Good sports coverage is still the one thing you can't get if you cut the cable.
So the Ontario Liberal Wynne government is floating the idea of privatizing Hydro One, the crown corporation which controls electrical transmission.
I have not heard of anyone who thinks this is a good idea, from either side of the political spectrum. I haven't made up my mind because I don't know enough about the economics of the issue. It seems strange to me that the Liberals would be the ones to want to do this.
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
People still watch sports.
lot of sports channels are also moving to streaming services. Like I can get all the sportsnets channels on my ipad now, nfl/mlb/nhl with their own streaming services. ESPN is now available on slingbox, etc.
But give it another 5 years at most and you'll be able to just signup to any sport you want, or sports network streaming service on it's own sans any cable subscription.
Kinda. Alot of them have walked it back later too. Good sports coverage is still the one thing you can't get if you cut the cable.
Very much so.
I would love to sign up for NHL streaming, except I am in Yellowknife which means I can't watch any Flames games on streaming. So it's a waste of money. I mean, I'll watch Montreal games, but my hometeam is Calgary. As soon as enough people truly jump ship on cable TV, though, that blackout bullshit will finally ease.
As it is, if I want to watch Calgary games, I have to sign up for cable + 2 different sports packages because the various away games will not always be on the same network. So I'm looking at over a thousand dollars a year just to watch NHL games?
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
People still watch sports.
lot of sports channels are also moving to streaming services. Like I can get all the sportsnets channels on my ipad now, nfl/mlb/nhl with their own streaming services. ESPN is now available on slingbox, etc.
But give it another 5 years at most and you'll be able to just signup to any sport you want, or sports network streaming service on it's own sans any cable subscription.
Kinda. Alot of them have walked it back later too. Good sports coverage is still the one thing you can't get if you cut the cable.
Very much so.
I would love to sign up for NHL streaming, except I am in Yellowknife which means I can't watch any Flames games on streaming. So it's a waste of money. I mean, I'll watch Montreal games, but my hometeam is Calgary. As soon as enough people truly jump ship on cable TV, though, that blackout bullshit will finally ease.
As it is, if I want to watch Calgary games, I have to sign up for cable + 2 different sports packages because the various away games will not always be on the same network. So I'm looking at over a thousand dollars a year just to watch NHL games?
No thanks.
The baseball blackout thing is really annoying too. You can subscribe to MLB.TV for like $120 per season but it's only out-of-market games. And unfortunately, the Blue Jays market is Canada. So short of VPNing which I'm not sure works, the MLB.TV subscription is not that useful for me. I can't even watch all the Blue Jays games let alone other teams.
Detail. There's only one given. And it's been carefully picked and phrased to make the striking side look like spoiled whiners. Or at least it'll look that way to people who think universities and unions negotiate through post-it notes. Also, aren't contract lecturers on strike along with TAs?
At U of T, contract faculty accepted an offer just before the TAs went on strike. They were on strike at York, but shortly accepted an offer that the TAs didn't, so they're not on strike anymore.
I worked at U of T for a few years at a Research Centre. I was never on good terms with the union because it sure seemed like they were keeping me from getting more (my manager tried to give me a raise but was "handcuffed" by the union rules because of my classification). And it's funny because it was my manager who would come in and tell me that I might be on strike tommorrow.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure we were a different union than the TAs though but that was my only union experience and it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
At U of T, contract faculty accepted an offer just before the TAs went on strike. They were on strike at York, but shortly accepted an offer that the TAs didn't, so they're not on strike anymore.
I worked at U of T for a few years at a Research Centre. I was never on good terms with the union because it sure seemed like they were keeping me from getting more (my manager tried to give me a raise but was "handcuffed" by the union rules because of my classification). And it's funny because it was my manager who would come in and tell me that I might be on strike tommorrow.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure we were a different union than the TAs though but that was my only union experience and it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
Sounds like USW 1998. They've been engaged in a protracted battle with the university for years over defining duties and establishing pay bands. Part of it is that office administrations (among others) are often asked to just "pick up" extra duties randomly by department chairs, and there's great inconsistency between departments over what work people with the same job titles do.
I worked at U of T for a few years at a Research Centre. I was never on good terms with the union because it sure seemed like they were keeping me from getting more (my manager tried to give me a raise but was "handcuffed" by the union rules because of my classification). And it's funny because it was my manager who would come in and tell me that I might be on strike tommorrow.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure we were a different union than the TAs though but that was my only union experience and it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
Sounds like USW 1998. They've been engaged in a protracted battle with the university for years over defining duties and establishing pay bands. Part of it is that office administrations (among others) are often asked to just "pick up" extra duties randomly by department chairs, and there's great inconsistency between departments over what work people with the same job titles do.
That's the one. Our thing was that I had been conducting research in a pretty specialized field for a number of years and it was something that people just don't come in with. My manager wanted to give me a big raise but to give me what he wanted, he would have to reclassify the position to either a Masters or PhD level (which I didn't have but could argue I had equivalent experience). But then if I left, it would make the position that much harder to fill since people don't have experience in this field and having a Masters or PhD do not make you better at the position (in fact, we had some MBA people who were very bad at it).
I dunno if you guys care about what's happening at UofT, but lololol, the Faculty of Arts and Science has basically declared that students are going to get free credits for courses this term:
In courses where not enough work is available to be marked or the instructor is absent and continues to be absent, there are alternative options, including the possible use of general letter grades (A, B, C, etc.) or CR/NCR in place of numeric grades. The instructor or in the case of a course with an absent instructor, a departmental representative will communicate with the class to determine how to proceed. Please wait to make any final decisions about your courses until the plan for each course has been fully communicated to you.
What a shitshow.
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BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
Not good form by the PC's. Elizabeth May denied the opportunity to voice concerns about Canadian Military action against ISIS / ISIL.
Between you and me, Peggy, I smoked this Juul and it did UNTHINKABLE things to my mind and body...
I am not fully knowledgeable about these matters, but people in my union who do know about this stuff always say that arbitration usually favours the union.
I don't know if that is specific to my union, my union/employer relationship, or all unions.
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
Alberta budget is out. Highlights are new, higher tax brackets for people above $100K and $250K, the return of health care premiums, bump to fuel and cigarette taxes, lots of service fee increases or creation of fees where there were none before, some family feel good tax credits and...other stuff
I am not fully knowledgeable about these matters, but people in my union who do know about this stuff always say that arbitration usually favours the union.
I don't know if that is specific to my union, my union/employer relationship, or all unions.
Welp. It's binding arbitration for us. Sentiment is that it'll favour us financially, but not structurally, which is unfortunate, since what we were striking for was, fundamentally, structural changes so that graduate students received defined benefits on a per-member basis. But we were pushing too close to the end of the term, and people weren't willing to do what it would take to severely disrupt the university. We took too long getting organized and ramped up, but we're already looking ahead to 2018.
Alberta budget is out. Highlights are new, higher tax brackets for people above $100K and $250K, the return of health care premiums, bump to fuel and cigarette taxes, lots of service fee increases or creation of fees where there were none before, some family feel good tax credits and...other stuff
Alberta budget is out. Highlights are new, higher tax brackets for people above $100K and $250K, the return of health care premiums, bump to fuel and cigarette taxes, lots of service fee increases or creation of fees where there were none before, some family feel good tax credits and...other stuff
1500 people will be put out of work (500 full time, 1000 part time).
I think it's the suddenness of the move and the complete lack of letting their own employees know that bothers me the most. I'm sure as hell not going to buy anything from Bestbuy after this.
1500 people will be put out of work (500 full time, 1000 part time).
I think it's the suddenness of the move and the complete lack of letting their own employees know that bothers me the most. I'm sure as hell not going to buy anything from Bestbuy after this.
People still go to BestBuy? I changed over almost entirely to online retailers and small electronics chains years ago, and I still frequent Loblaws and McDonald's :O
It never made much sense to me why both stores existed when they were almost literally exactly the same. Even their websites were identical. I'm pretty sure that realization is what spurred Best Buy to leave Vancouver Island a while ago. In Victoria, the Futureshop and Best Buy were in the same damn mall.
Business wise, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, just a sudden shock. Personnel wise, it's never good when people lose their jobs to redundancy. And finding out because the fucking building was locked is universally stupid, seriously.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It never made much sense to me why both stores existed when they were almost literally exactly the same. Even their websites were identical. I'm pretty sure that realization is what spurred Best Buy to leave Vancouver Island a while ago. In Victoria, the Futureshop and Best Buy were in the same damn mall.
Business wise, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, just a sudden shock. Personnel wise, it's never good when people lose their jobs to redundancy. And finding out because the fucking building was locked is universally stupid, seriously.
There were definitely redundancies. There's a commercial center around here where there were literally a Futureshop and a BestBuy across from each other.
The main issue here is how they're handling this. If they announced that they were folding Futureshop into BestBuy and closing some stores over the course of a few months, it would still be a bummer and very unfortunate for those losing their jobs, but it wouldn't be as bad as learning you're unemployed by showing up to work and finding the place locked with a sign.
It never made much sense to me why both stores existed when they were almost literally exactly the same. Even their websites were identical. I'm pretty sure that realization is what spurred Best Buy to leave Vancouver Island a while ago. In Victoria, the Futureshop and Best Buy were in the same damn mall.
Business wise, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, just a sudden shock. Personnel wise, it's never good when people lose their jobs to redundancy. And finding out because the fucking building was locked is universally stupid, seriously.
There were definitely redundancies. There's a commercial center around here where there were literally a Futureshop and a BestBuy across from each other.
The main issue here is how they're handling this. If they announced that they were folding Futureshop into BestBuy and closing some stores over the course of a few months, it would still be a bummer and very unfortunate for those losing their jobs, but it wouldn't be as bad as learning you're unemployed by showing up to work and finding the place locked with a sign.
That same situation (Futureshop and Best Buy next to each other) is replicated all over the country. I don't think this is really a huge surprise, but I can't think of why they wouldn't have had a more structured approach to the employee layoffs. I doubt very much they're planning to pay rent on vacant stores for months, so their landlords must have known which stores were closing well ahead of time and factored that in to leasing plans.
I would have assumed there had to be a more structured approach, given how they're doing this. Closing the store for a week so you can replace all the red signs with yellow ones makes sense, and the kind of thing employees would have to know about.
That they didn't... Christ on a crutch...
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It would have made a ton more sense if they had done this slowly over the course of the last few years. It's not like any of this was a huge surprise to them.
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
It would have made a ton more sense if they had done this slowly over the course of the last few years. It's not like any of this was a huge surprise to them.
On the flip side, it's hard to retain and attract workers if people know the store is going to close. Not saying that it's right, but the company sees this coming and makes the decision to spring it on everyone since as soon as they announce they're going to lose a significant number of staff and will have a tough time hiring someone even if the store isn't going to close for another 12-18 months.
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Caulk Bite 6One of the multitude of Dans infesting this placeRegistered Userregular
It would have made a ton more sense if they had done this slowly over the course of the last few years. It's not like any of this was a huge surprise to them.
On the flip side, it's hard to retain and attract workers if people know the store is going to close. Not saying that it's right, but the company sees this coming and makes the decision to spring it on everyone since as soon as they announce they're going to lose a significant number of staff and will have a tough time hiring someone even if the store isn't going to close for another 12-18 months.
yeah, but that ignores the fact that there's still people who would need the work badly enough to just deal with the finite employment time. there's not really a shortage of those.
Posts
Looks like the CRTC is telling the cable companies to offer a-la-cart channels, so yay consumer rights. Since this was encouraged by the PCs there probably won't be any political interference about it.
Only going to take effect by December 2016, so there's a year and a half of waiting to get rid of garbage channels if you haven't cut the cord.
This is kind of hilarious.
I mean, people are cutting the cord in record numbers. The next generation will never have had cable, let alone cut any cord. I'm still reasonably old, and I never had cable from the moment I left my parents's house.
People still watch sports.
lot of sports channels are also moving to streaming services. Like I can get all the sportsnets channels on my ipad now, nfl/mlb/nhl with their own streaming services. ESPN is now available on slingbox, etc.
But give it another 5 years at most and you'll be able to just signup to any sport you want, or sports network streaming service on it's own sans any cable subscription.
Yeah, this would be excellent.
And although the US is indeed seriously screwed, the good parts of the system are that it's not as heavily whipped as ours and you get to vote for a rep you like without that vote immediately meaning you're endorsing the leader of that party as the executive. I'd be happy with any reform that lets MPs have more independence and reduces the stupid voting games Canadians keep playing because what they really want is a minority government.
Kinda. Alot of them have walked it back later too. Good sports coverage is still the one thing you can't get if you cut the cable.
I have not heard of anyone who thinks this is a good idea, from either side of the political spectrum. I haven't made up my mind because I don't know enough about the economics of the issue. It seems strange to me that the Liberals would be the ones to want to do this.
Nothing the Ontario government has done to Ontario Hydro for the past ... oh, 25 years has been any good.
They shut down all the coal plants. That was good for the environment, at least.
Very much so.
I would love to sign up for NHL streaming, except I am in Yellowknife which means I can't watch any Flames games on streaming. So it's a waste of money. I mean, I'll watch Montreal games, but my hometeam is Calgary. As soon as enough people truly jump ship on cable TV, though, that blackout bullshit will finally ease.
As it is, if I want to watch Calgary games, I have to sign up for cable + 2 different sports packages because the various away games will not always be on the same network. So I'm looking at over a thousand dollars a year just to watch NHL games?
No thanks.
The baseball blackout thing is really annoying too. You can subscribe to MLB.TV for like $120 per season but it's only out-of-market games. And unfortunately, the Blue Jays market is Canada. So short of VPNing which I'm not sure works, the MLB.TV subscription is not that useful for me. I can't even watch all the Blue Jays games let alone other teams.
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
Detail. There's only one given. And it's been carefully picked and phrased to make the striking side look like spoiled whiners. Or at least it'll look that way to people who think universities and unions negotiate through post-it notes. Also, aren't contract lecturers on strike along with TAs?
EDIT: I'm pretty sure we were a different union than the TAs though but that was my only union experience and it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
I see. Thanks for the clarification!
Sounds like USW 1998. They've been engaged in a protracted battle with the university for years over defining duties and establishing pay bands. Part of it is that office administrations (among others) are often asked to just "pick up" extra duties randomly by department chairs, and there's great inconsistency between departments over what work people with the same job titles do.
That's the one. Our thing was that I had been conducting research in a pretty specialized field for a number of years and it was something that people just don't come in with. My manager wanted to give me a big raise but to give me what he wanted, he would have to reclassify the position to either a Masters or PhD level (which I didn't have but could argue I had equivalent experience). But then if I left, it would make the position that much harder to fill since people don't have experience in this field and having a Masters or PhD do not make you better at the position (in fact, we had some MBA people who were very bad at it).
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
What a shitshow.
http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/03/25/strikes-continue-at-york-university-of-toronto.html
Does somebody here who knows more than me tell me whether I should like or dislike binding arbitration?
In general, Binding Arbitration has a large risk of favoring the groups that pay them in aggregate.
Its sort of like counselors, where even though there is some form of professionalism involved, it doesn't necessarily weed out personal prejudices.
MWO: Adamski
I don't know if that is specific to my union, my union/employer relationship, or all unions.
http://alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=379486D767B80-E6B6-D13B-D2D8C1E809442C2F - news release
http://finance.alberta.ca/publications/budget/budget2015/fiscal-plan-tables.pdf#changes direct link to tables of tax changes, also has full budget
Welp. It's binding arbitration for us. Sentiment is that it'll favour us financially, but not structurally, which is unfortunate, since what we were striking for was, fundamentally, structural changes so that graduate students received defined benefits on a per-member basis. But we were pushing too close to the end of the term, and people weren't willing to do what it would take to severely disrupt the university. We took too long getting organized and ramped up, but we're already looking ahead to 2018.
Sigh.
I was wondering how Danielle Smith would feel about having to go out and sell this, but I guess she doesn't have to worry about that anymore...
Webpage is down? CBC story here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/danielle-smith-loses-pc-nomination-in-highwood-to-carrie-fischer-1.3013567
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/future-shop-stores-closed-across-canada-some-to-rebrand-as-best-buy-1.3013534
1500 people will be put out of work (500 full time, 1000 part time).
I think it's the suddenness of the move and the complete lack of letting their own employees know that bothers me the most. I'm sure as hell not going to buy anything from Bestbuy after this.
People still go to BestBuy? I changed over almost entirely to online retailers and small electronics chains years ago, and I still frequent Loblaws and McDonald's :O
Business wise, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, just a sudden shock. Personnel wise, it's never good when people lose their jobs to redundancy. And finding out because the fucking building was locked is universally stupid, seriously.
There were definitely redundancies. There's a commercial center around here where there were literally a Futureshop and a BestBuy across from each other.
The main issue here is how they're handling this. If they announced that they were folding Futureshop into BestBuy and closing some stores over the course of a few months, it would still be a bummer and very unfortunate for those losing their jobs, but it wouldn't be as bad as learning you're unemployed by showing up to work and finding the place locked with a sign.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/air-canada-ac624-crash-airline-says-weather-conditions-were-safe-1.3013979
That same situation (Futureshop and Best Buy next to each other) is replicated all over the country. I don't think this is really a huge surprise, but I can't think of why they wouldn't have had a more structured approach to the employee layoffs. I doubt very much they're planning to pay rent on vacant stores for months, so their landlords must have known which stores were closing well ahead of time and factored that in to leasing plans.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
That they didn't... Christ on a crutch...
On the flip side, it's hard to retain and attract workers if people know the store is going to close. Not saying that it's right, but the company sees this coming and makes the decision to spring it on everyone since as soon as they announce they're going to lose a significant number of staff and will have a tough time hiring someone even if the store isn't going to close for another 12-18 months.
yeah, but that ignores the fact that there's still people who would need the work badly enough to just deal with the finite employment time. there's not really a shortage of those.
kind of a moot point to argue, I know.